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Sunday, March 8, 2015

The Right Person For the Job

Congressman Gowdy is the chairman of the House's special committee investigating the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.  He is clearly the right person for that job.  Just look at what has happened.

Prior to the committee being established there were three or four committees that were touching on Benghazi.  We heard from some witnesses and saw a few documents, but most of the focus was on things like who changed the talking points.  For the first time, we have investigators who are not just following media stories but who are systematically gathering evidence to get a full picture of what happened.  The media and the Democrats said that the new committee was a waste of time and would just go over all the stuff that had previously been covered.

Well now we have heard about Hillary Clinton's secret email system.  And that's just the start.  This morning on Face the Nation, Gowdy was interviewed and revealed that there are gaps of "months and months and months" during which there are no emails either coming from or going to Mrs. Clinton that have been turned over to Congress.  Gowdy pointed to a picture of Mrs. Clinton sitting on the air force plane on her way to Libya for negotiations.  In the picture, Clinton is checking her phone for messages.  Gowdy notes that Congress has gotten no email from the day of the picture and, indeed, no email from the entire duration of the trip.  Does anyone actually believe that Clinton went to Libya for negotiations and neither sent nor received any email pertaining to Libya during that time?

What this latest revelation from Gowdy demonstrates is that Hillary's big show of turning over 55,000 emails is just that:  a big show.  Obviously, the Clinton people left out all the important stuff from the batch that they turned over to the State Department.  Mrs. Clinton has been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, and there is no way out of this mess.  Even if she were to turn over ALL of the email she has (an unlikely thing for anyone named Clinton to do), millions of people will never believe that she has really come clean.  Once she started by withholding some of the email, who could ever trust her to change?

And one last note:  before someone emails me to tell me that maybe Hillary was looking at text messages, please remember that the use of text messages is inappropriate under the relevant federal law.  All messages are supposed to in written form that is to be preserved as a government record.  Text messages just don't qualify.

I don't know what is happening right now with these emails.  I would be willing to bet, however, that representative Gowdy already has his staff issuing requests to the State Department for copies of all email sent from or to email at the Clintonemail server to or by anyone else in the State Department.  Similar requests will no doubt go to the White House.  That won't pick up email that Hillary may have used to raise funds for the Clinton foundation, but it surely ought to pick up those email that deal with Libya and Benghazi.  Hillary and her people may be willing to risk their careers to keep the email secret, but I wonder how many in the White House would do the same thing.  We have already seen the Obama White House doing a major dump on Hillary for this mess.  If copies from the White House of Hillary's email happen to wound Mrs. Clinton in order to preserve the good name of the president and his people, well I just don't think that Obama will be too upset.



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